...it's not necessarily a staple of our lives, yet it occurs more often than we'd like. As I was reading the USA Today about the account of the Connecticut shooting it was, as I'm sure with most, a heart wrenching thing. Especially when I was able to see all the little faces, brief character traits, and their likes associated with names in what amounts to an attempt to paint gentleness where we already knew it existed, rambunctious youngsters and quiet ones, dancing and running the gamut of childhood dreams in playgrounds now so ethereal to the parents of slain tots. I grieve as do many other men here.Our prayer request box from which I get a third of to pray over weekly, were filled with almost exclusive petitions for those families affected. Although we reside with the brutal terror of prison life, some things are even unacceptable to us. We wouldn't mind spending time with the ilk that we do, but men who hurt children we've no stomach for. Still the CHRIST card will get pulled on me in my prayers and I am compelled to pray from places I don't yearn to see reconciliation take its honor upon. And then I ask as the song from Cast Casting Crowns tells me "Who Am I?"
A strong irony took up residency when I received a CHRISTmas card from Tara and her husband Paul with all their youngsters' vibrancy splayed across it so real and touching. As I was able to read what Honor, Conner, Arianna, and Samuel were up to as of late, it drove home how fragile this little family is. Because right next to me were the names of those other children...close to the exact age as these guys I was looking at....one in a ballet tutu and giving it her all...one holding a kitten...one a little chick...and Samuel was just smiling away as if their were no tomorrow....for those others there wasn't. A solemnity that reassures me the import of training our children well.(Proverbs 22:6) I can't thank Tara and Paul enough for helping me from the abysmal of sorrow that tanks me almost daily anyway after realizing double digits spent in CRISTmas prisons.
I was telling my cellie the other day that prison was really kicking my...you know the rest. I am thankful today for the grandchildren I've yet to see. My son wrote more of a compelling email the other day expressing his anger toward me not being in his life as well the lives of his endearing new family. He even went as far to say he has not been a good son to me because he forgot that I, too, have pain. Yet I could not for the life in me understand how he finds fault with himself. I own the onus of the bereftness there. Once again as he began letting me know that he is having a reawakening of CHRIST, then it began to clear up some what...only GOD can make that which is crooked straight...i.e...me..his dad...his children's granddada...his Mom's husband...(she says ex I say next...).I'm grateful today, a few days from CHRISTmas to be able to reach out to you guys. I was telling my son in response to his email that over the years I have wanted many folks to reach out to me...letters...phone calls...visits...emails...skywriting...smoke signals...yet when I got his message, the veracity of it was more welcomed than all the folks I could ever want to hear from. Especially the part of his reawakening to JESUS...I pray for all who read this to consider the same for yours and yours'.
I love you all with that agape from which as David, my son tells me, could not have written the words he did to me. Please pass on the TRUTH about JESUS to others while there is still breath upon, and in each of us. For it is GOD who deals us these measures of time. We know not when it may abruptly end.
...later...dougie boy...
Luke 2 for you...for me
